“So tell me,” I enquired of R when I caught up with him in Boston Tea Party, “did you also get half way across the bridge, hear yourself say “Duck!”, and when the people walking in front of you turned to find out what the hazard was you’d just apparently just warned them about, have to try to look as if you’d no idea who’d spoken?” R grinned and shook his head. “No? OK. Just me then.”
To be fair, it had been a surprise, because I’d been looking hard for Tufted Ducks on the river as I walked up the south bank towards the Old Tramway Bridge, and hadn’t seen any, but that was probably because this male was diving for food at the time, and very mobile. I caught up with him close to the north bank, by the Fire Service memorial, and got a few photos before he dived again. I then watched him work his way right over to the south bank in a sequence of four or five dives, and by the time R and I had finished our coffee and returned to the river he was north side again, down at the chain ferry dock. My last sighting of him was off the RSC gardens, as he took off and flew back towards the bridge.
Speaking of flight, my second photo tonight – which would have been my blip had the tuftie not appeared – is an incoming family of Greylags, approaching the river and trying (with varying success) to hold a steady course. You’ll be pleased to hear than none of them actually stalled and went in bill-first, though not all the landings were elegant.
